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The Devil’s Rock (2011) [REVIEW]

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! How can anyone, ANYONE, see this poster and not want to fucking see it? THIS LOOKS INSANE. Lady with sharp teeth. Nazis. Not much clothing. Blood. Brass knuckle/stabby knife combo thingy. The word “DEVIL” in the title. Of course I had to fucking see it! When I gave Rampaige a description of what it was about, I said “something about Nazis”, but even if I hadn’t been that descriptive, I know she would have been sold on just the fact that it had something to do with devils or rocks. I’m sure that if she asked what it was about and I had been able to telepathically project this image into her head, she would have gotten even more excited. And I must say, that despite starting this movie around midnight, she stayed awake for the whole thing! THE WHOLE THING! She’s normally asleep by 8:15! GOOD JOB!

You have been awarded five points for your Cannibal Holocaust reference!

It’s World War II (of course) and two soldiers from New Zealand are on a covert mission to destroy some Nazi base (of course) and discover there is scary Satan stuff happening (of course). One soldier is killed when found by Col. Klaus Meyer (Matthew Sunderland) while the other soldier, Captain Ben Grogan (Craig Hall), is merely taken captive. Meyer attempts to interrogate Grogan on why he’s there and what he’s doing, but Grogan can’t seem to focus because of the female screams he hears coming from nearby. I should also mention that this base they are at is a bunch of poorly lit tunnels and the base is littered with dead, mutilated Nazi soldiers. Grogan overpowers Meyer and when he tries to rescue the female, he sees it’s his dead wife Helena (Gina Varela). WAIT, WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?! Meyer explains how the Nazis are all about the occult and the person who appears to be Helena is actually a shape-shifting demon. Once she’s called on her bullshit, we see that yes, in fact she is a demon lady with bright red skin and horns and all that shit. A transmission comes through about a buttload of Nazis coming towards the island, so Meyer convinces Grogan to help him conduct a ceremony to banish her to Hell. This “demon bitch” keeps trying to get Grogan to feed her Meyer, because apparently evil people taste better. Scared that she’ll escape and kill the entire world, Grogan helps with the ceremony, only to have Meyer turn on him. Damn Nazis, you just can’t trust them anymore. Grogan gives him the slip and lets “Helena” feed on him. Keeping in mind what’s best for the war, Grogan does nothing to get rid of the demon, and instead tells her about how many evil Nazis are coming her way that she can feast on. He says he will come back eventually to finish her off, but she can eat as many Nazi dickheads as she wants. The film ends as we see Grogan bury his wife’s picture on the beach as Nazi ships and planes and helicopters approach.

Things got pretty scary when she got all Aphex Twin-y.

I guess that cover made true of its promise, and I don’t know what else you could ask for in a movie like this. There were Nazis and demons and WWII things happening all at once, but really nothing more. I guess it was pretty cool that all of the effects were practical ones, so clearly the crew must have had a good time shooting, and the makeup effects for the demon were practical as well. On the one hand, it made everything feel like it was a movie you’d see on SyFy, but on the other hand you were thankful that it wasn’t shitty CGI. The whole time I was watching this movie I couldn’t help but think of how it’d be much more successful if it was one of those Masters of Horror short films as opposed to the 90 minute feature it turned into. I think there’s really only so much you can do when you take three actors and lock them in a bunker and see what happens. Granted, it held my attention for the whole thing, and the twist of the demon staying alive to kill more Nazis was pretty cool, but there wasn’t really anything else to it. I will have to say that it gets bonus points for their usage of evil insignias from the Necronomicon instead of just throwing pentagrams everywhere. It was a nice way of breaking things up a bit!